The Enemy of the Good (19 page)

‘I think that’s what’s known as a double bind.’

‘In any case it’s not the first prayer but the second.’

‘So what’s the first?’

‘More fennel anyone?’ Susannah asked.

‘To thank God for the cock that distinguishes between night and day.’

‘Well, I’m with you on that one,’ Mike said.

Susannah stifled a scream as Clement and Carla chuckled. Her dream of their all making common cause, despite their differences, lay shattered. She grabbed the empty plates and took them into the kitchen, more inclined to throw them against the wall than to soak them in one of the two brightly
coloured
bowls she had bought in readiness for her new life. Clement had never taken her seriously. As a child, she had had to make herself the butt of his and Mark’s jokes in order to be included in their games. He held her in as much contempt as he had done when she was five. He knew how much Zvi meant to her and yet he had done nothing but goad him from the moment he arrived. Carla and Mike were little better. On a positive note, she need have no fears about divided loyalties. There was no longer any doubt as to where hers lay.

She took Zvi’s casserole into the dining room and returned to the kitchen for the fusilli. Her prayer that the conversation would have more in common than the food went unanswered when, after a pause for compliments, Mike resumed the attack.

‘Going back to the cock – ’

‘Must we?’ Zvi asked.

‘Where do you stand on those of us who give thanks for the human sort?’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘I think you do. For myself I couldn’t care less, but I have a lover. Not a partner, Susannah, or a friend or a significant euphemism, but the love of my life. And he believes. And I’ve watched him tie himself in knots, as he
struggles
to find a place for himself in texts that were written thousands of years ago, with the deliberate aim of excluding him.’

‘Not him, his desires,’ Zvi said. ‘The Torah tells us clearly that God has a plan for each and every one of us. “Male and female created He them”.’

‘No room at the inn,’ Clement said. ‘That is metaphorically.’

‘Don’t you think I also have to fight my desires?’ Zvi asked, filling
Susannah
with the dread of a revelation that would tear her in two. ‘A desire to touch: a desire to kiss: a desire to be close to a woman. But I know they’ll be transformed into something infinitely richer when I marry.’ At once her fears were assuaged. He had not only spoken of ‘touch’ and ‘kiss’ for the first time, but he had done so while holding her gaze, transporting her to an unimagined pinnacle of bliss. The threat of dissension caused her no more concern than the choice of coffee or tisane with which she ended the meal.

She next saw Zvi after the Sabbath service when they paid their regular visit to the café. They sat alone, apart from an elderly woman carrying on a voluble conversation with her shopping bag. The proprietor brought their drinks before returning to the counter, which he polished assiduously.
Susannah
looked at Zvi, who stared deep into his cup.

‘Busy day yesterday?’ she asked, careful not to reveal her hurt at the lack of a thank you call.

‘I heard from your friend Liam Denny. He wants me to arrange for him and his wife to go to the ashram in Rishikesh.’

‘Terrific! Play your cards right and you’ll have the whole of Alice’s Kitchen.’

‘It may not be that easy. He’s going on to Dharamsala and expects me to set up an audience with the Dalai Lama.’

‘Liam? Oh, of course! You remember
Lotus Flower
? It was global!’

‘It’s his wife’s idea. You can tell he’s devoted to her.’

So devoted, Susannah recalled, that he had been spotted visiting a
prostitute
on the night she was in labour. Her efforts to bury the story were not something that she chose to share with Zvi.

‘How did you enjoy your trip to darkest Notting Hill?’ she asked casually.

‘I liked your sister-in-law.’

‘Clement wasn’t at his best,’ she said, angry that she should feel the need to defend him. ‘He’s been going through a rough patch ever since the
business
at Roxborough… A window he designed was vandalised.’ Zvi’s blank look brought home the scale of the Lubavitch seclusion. ‘My mother says he’s painted nothing since then. And painting’s his entire life.’

‘It’s sad to see a gifted man squandering his talents.’

‘It’s only been six months. I’m certain he’ll soon be back in the studio.’

‘I meant more than that. Flying in the face of Nature. Flying in the face of God.’

There was no surer measure of the distance she had travelled in a few short months than that she let his remark pass unchallenged. She refused to allow family feeling to blind her to the truth. She feared, however, that the
movement
had been all one way. Her commitment to the Lubavitch had yet to be matched by Zvi’s commitment to her. Rivka’s account of her lightning courtship served to underline his indecision. Afraid of betraying herself, she focused her attention on the café, finding to her amusement that the mad old woman was in fact a devoted dog lover. The sight of the furry brown ears poking up from the shopping bag steeled her resolve to speak.

‘Zvi, I know it’s against the rules but will you look at me for a moment?’ He fixed his soulful green eyes on her and, to her consternation, she was the one who was forced to turn away. ‘In five months time I’m going to be forty,’ she said hesitantly.

‘I see.’

‘Is that all you can say? I thought it only fair to tell you.’

‘There was no need.’

‘Why? Do I look forty?’

‘Not at all. You know you don’t. You look like someone who doesn’t look forty. I’m sorry. I’m not very good at guessing women’s ages.’

‘Or paying them compliments.’ She suddenly warmed to Mr 9½ inches and his statistical precision. ‘I wanted to let you know in case you have any plans for… for anything.’

‘Plans?’ he asked, lost in thought. ‘Yes, of course. We should have a party. I’ll speak to Rivka.’

‘No, not a party.’ She stood up. ‘I’m sorry. You must have a lot to do. I ought to go.’

‘No, it’s me who’s sorry. Please, sit down. I understand what you’re saying. And I’m very grateful. It’s just so hard for me to speak of these things.’

‘Do you think it’s easy for me? Women aren’t supposed to take the lead in the everyday world, let alone the Lubavitch. But I had to speak out. I can’t pretend it doesn’t matter. Not if you want… I want… I want so much. Some men might think twice if they wanted children.’

‘I want children. And, if the Lord wills it, I shall have them. But the
important
thing is to have them with the woman I love.’

His bashful smile was the closest he had come to declaring himself. Seizing the moment, she invited him to spend the weekend at Beckley. Despite the complications of travel and his commitment to the Sunday youth group, he accepted.

Her first task on returning home was to ring her parents. She was sure that her mother must have been given a detailed – if distorted – picture of Zvi by Clement, but she put on a convincing front, greeting the news of the impending visit with joy and surprise in equal measure, even after hearing of the Lubavitch connection. ‘My grandmother would have been pleased,’ she said cryptically, before handing the phone to her father.

‘The man’s a duke?’ he asked, in dismay.

‘No, Pa, a Jew!’ she shouted, promising herself to tackle him on his deafness.

Two days later she faxed them a list of requirements as rigorous as those for a royal visit. Zvi would be taking his own food; although, as a concession to her parents’ hospitality, he had agreed to a dinner of salmon and fruit salad on their first night. To avoid a clash of crockery, her mother decreed that they would eat off paper plates.

‘We’ll picnic. It’ll be such fun.’

‘It’s not a game, Ma,’ she said anxiously. ‘It’s his… it’s our life.’

Her anxieties were compounded by a bruising few days at the office and a frantic dash to Paddington station on Friday afternoon, where she almost missed Zvi. The packed train ensured that they were well-chaperoned, all the more so when Zvi elected to stand in the buffet rather than risk a nudge from a restless neighbour. They were met at Oxford by Mr Shepherd, who greeted Zvi with the guarded smile of one who had holidayed for the past twenty years on the Norfolk Broads. As they approached the house, rolling through the finely wrought gates and down the sweeping avenue of poplars, she felt the pleasurable tug of her roots, however tangled. She was touched to find her parents waiting for them in the hall. Her mother extended a lacy hand to Zvi.

‘I thought it was allowed so long as my flesh was covered,’ she said, when he backed away.

‘It makes no difference.’

‘Even at my advanced age?’

‘Not at any age. It’s a blanket ban to protect us from the consequences of our desires.’

‘You flatter me!’

‘No, he doesn’t, Ma. He’s simply pointing out the law.’

Her mother smiled wryly and led the way into the drawing room. Susannah was moved as Zvi looked around with unconcealed admiration, her Granville self-deprecation having failed to prepare him for either the opulence or the scale. He sat on one of the elegantly shabby Sheraton chairs, between a lapis vase and a Sèvres clock, and studied the Batoni portrait of Benjamin Granville dressed as Cicero on his Grand Tour.

‘You have a beautiful house,’ he said. ‘It’s very kind of you to invite me.’

‘Not at all. We’re delighted. We’ve heard so much about you.’

‘Nonsense, Ma,’ Susannah interjected, worried that Zvi would think her indiscreet.

‘Susannah tells me you’ve lived here for three hundred years.’

‘Not personally,’ her mother said with a laugh. ‘Though I have to admit that it sometimes seems so.’ She poured the tea and trusting that Zvi wouldn’t be shocked, sat cross-legged on the floor, explaining that it was the position in which she felt most comfortable. Susannah feared that she had misjudged her audience and that, if she were waiting for Zvi to applaud her youthful
suppleness
, she would have to wait a long time. He stared at his knees, clearly
unimpressed
by conduct more suited to a Hadza encampment than an Oxfordshire drawing room.

Despite concerted effort on both sides, Susannah held out little hope of their forming a meaningful connection. The truth was that, although she was reclaiming her Jewish heritage, her mother had long since rejected hers. Meanwhile, she herself was rejecting the Christian heritage in which she had been brought up. As she gazed at her father, Rivka’s phrase about not inviting gentiles to her table rang ominously in her ears. He looked so frail. She was noticing changes in him on her monthly visits which she might have expected on an annual homecoming from the tropics. When her mother suggested that he show Zvi the walled garden, he checked the clock like a child, not so much reading the time as picturing the position of the hands.

Susannah tagged along, anxious to defuse any tension, but they had barely reached the sundial when her father had some sort of dizzy spell and only Zvi’s quick reactions kept him from falling flat. ‘I’ve got you. You can lean on me,’ he said in a voice of such tenderness that for a moment she forgot that its object was her father. She helped Zvi to lift him on to a nearby bench,
squatting
by his side and gently rubbing his wrists. He quickly recovered, protesting as always that they were making too much fuss. She made an equally stock promise not to mention his ‘silly stumble’ to her mother, which she had every intention of breaking the moment they returned indoors.

Ignoring his insistence that he was well enough to continue the walk, she linked arms to lead him back, tingling with illicit pleasure when she
inadvertently
brushed her hand against Zvi’s. Leaving the men in the drawing room to thumb through the family albums, she sought out her mother in the kitchen, where she was trying to soothe the double blow to Mrs Shepherd’s pride of the kosher food and the paper plates. Her own suggestion that there would be less to wash up fell on deaf ears, and she followed her mother out, while their housekeeper remained at the sink, plucking the eyes from potatoes with Shakespearian ferocity.

Pausing on the stairs to describe her father’s blackout, she was dismayed to learn that it was not an isolated incident.

‘I’ve been so worried, but he refuses to take them seriously. He calls them “senior moments”, as if that ridiculous phrase says everything.’

‘When does a senior moment become Alzheimer’s?’ Susannah asked, voicing her gravest fear.

‘Not now, darling, please!’

‘You must make him see a doctor. Apart from anything else, it’s not fair on you.’

‘Promise me you won’t say a word. You’ll only upset him. Trust me, I’m watching him like a hawk.’

Susannah’s unease increased when she entered the drawing room to find her father in deep distress. ‘Marta, Nanna, come quickly!’ he called. ‘I’m in a dreadful muddle. I’m trying to show Zvi some pictures of the children, but I can’t make out which are Mark and Clement and which are William and Piers.’

‘Don’t worry, darling,’ her mother said, ‘there’s such a strong family
resemblance
, you need a magnifying glance to tell them apart.’

Susannah winced. It was one thing for him to confuse Mark and Clement – although, in more orthodox days, he had claimed that his ability to
distinguish
them even as newborn babies confirmed his belief in the existence of souls – but their cousins were another matter. For the second time in minutes she was put in mind of
King Lear
.

Realising that it would soon be sundown, she hurried into the dining room to light the Sabbath candles, choosing the two plainest from the array of
candlesticks
that her mother had placed on the sideboard. All her concerns about her father’s health and the success of the weekend vanished in the
tranquillity
of her prayers, and she was filled with a sense of goodwill towards the world which persisted through drinks to dinner. As they took their seats, her father asked Zvi to say grace, which he did, tactfully extending the traditional Sabbath blessing to include ‘all our families and friends’.